Relatives can be fickle people. It’s okay to not really care for them very much. I used to struggle with the feeling that I don’t like my step granny. It just didn’t feel right to not like certain family members, after all, they are family right? We are taught to love our family members even if we don’t especially like them. Well, the older I’ve gotten and the more I have developed as a person, I have come to realize that I don’t need to tell myself I like someone just because I should. My big, bad step granny has always made me uncomfortable and shy. When I was young I wasn’t real sure why, but I could never warm up to her. Now that I’m all grown up I can see her evil little ways. The woman is constantly bombarding everyone with petty, pointless little jabs that are intended to chip away at our self esteem until we all go home with our heads hung low while squawks out the front door what a great time she had and to come back soon. It’s like her victory song. Recently, my grandfather, whom I’ve never been extremely close to and who is married to the evil step granny decided to help me pay for my graduate degree….Mmmk, this was an unexpected offer, but we share an interest in the subject and he told me I deserved it. Sweet! Then, after breaking down my expenses, tuition cost, and budget for him in an email like he asked, instead of the extra $5000 a year he said he could do, he comes back with $50.00 a month during each semester. A grand total of $400 a year. Everything helps it really does, but I just know my evil step granny was behind this change of heart. It’s what she does.

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Traveling for Thanksgiving is not something everyone will be doing this year. The gas prices are soaring again and the plane tickets are overly priced. I tried to get the money together just to travel to Oklahoma and back and with the gas to get down there and the gas to drive around up there and then get back the dollar signs were soon getting larger than they had been.  I tried to make a budget to get to Oklahoma and back and use it to the best of my ability but the budget was beginning to bust. I don’t understand why I was the one nominated since the family in Oklahoma has no issues with money. So I tried to re do the budget and still get up there but the harder I try to stretch our money just for gas to get up there it still isn’t working. We would still have to get a motel to stay somewhere and have food for the entire weekend. I tried explaining this to my husband and of course he wants me to find a way because it is his family. I don’t understand why he isn’t getting the fact that a dollar can only stretch so far. However my budget revision will continue the rest of the night until tomorrow morning and we will decide Thanksgiving Eve whether we will be going or not

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I never have been really good at managing my own money, and a lot of times I would find myself having to call my mom to help me out at the end of the month when I realized I did something stupid and I needed her to dig me out. So, now that I’m “on my own”, I’ve been attempting some serious money managing skills. These usually include: keeping my money in a silver can and hiding it from myself, putting my debit card in the freezer to “freeze” my assets, and not eating anything but fast food. So, as you can probably guess, none of those worked very well. So, one thing that has really helped me progress in understanding where I can spend my money and how much I need to safe is Mint. This is an awesome, free money managing site. The best part if that you actually enter in your bank account information and it pulls in your transactions from your cards. This helps in understanding what you are actually spending your money on, how to budget it so you don’t go overboard, and how to end up actually saving money to invest. It’s awesome. You just go in and type what you need to save for bills, rent, gas, groceries, anything, and it makes it a lot easier to find a balance. It’s a little scary to enter in your personal bank information onto a free web site, but they are secure and verified and make it where your banking information is read only. Go try it out, it’s simple to use and really helpful for those of us out there still trying to learn how to take care of ourselves.

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